With fewer than 13,000 vehicles sold globally in all of 2024, it’s fair to say that hydrogen fuel-cell cars haven’t exactly taken off. That’s despite the tantalizing promise of an electric vehicle that only takes a few minutes to fill up.
BMW is more bullish on the technology than ever, though, recently unveiling plans to launch its first-ever hydrogen-powered EV—dubbed the iX5 Hydrogen—in 2028. To learn why BMW is still all-in on this technology despite the major challenges ahead—mainly fueling infrastructure—we caught up with Michael Rath, the automaker’s vice president of hydrogen vehicles.
These bonus episodes of the Plugged-In Podcast were produced at Climate Week NYC in partnership with BMW.
On a basic level, Rath sees hydrogen vehicles as an option for anybody who wants an EV but can’t charge conveniently. Maybe they don’t have charging options at home or at work, or maybe they just can’t be bothered to plan a trip around fast-charging stations.
“Our core business is to sell cars and to make our customers happy. At the same time, we are clearly dedicated and absolutely convinced that we need to bring down CO2 emissions,” he told me and Patrick George on an episode of the Plugged-In Podcast recorded at Climate Week NYC late last month. “And to combine those two perspectives, you need to leverage all available technologies.”
What Rath doesn’t say explicitly is that BMW is also being pushed in that lower-CO2 direction by regulations. The European Union has mandated that automakers drastically bring down emissions over the next decade, culminating in zero-emission car sales exclusively by 2035. So manufacturers there have a serious incentive to figure out how to sell gasoline-free cars to the masses.
And hydrogen cars, in theory at least, provide a Goldilocks solution: the nonexistent emissions of an EV with the convenience of a gas-station fill-up.
Photo by: BMW
For the uninitiated, hydrogen cars are basically electric cars with a different way of storing energy. In your Teslas, Ford Mustang Mach-Es and the like, energy is stored in a big battery in the floor. Typically, it takes around 30 minutes to recharge that honking pack on a road trip. Hydrogen cars have a pressurized tank on board, along with a fuel-cell system that converts the gas into electricity, with water as a byproduct. They’re refueled more like a gas car is, with a nozzle that should replenish a vehicle’s tank in minutes.
The iX5 Hydrogen’s electric drivetrain is even the same as its battery-electric counterpart’s, Rath said. That means that the iX5 Hydrogen will drive like an EV—punchy acceleration, smooth and quiet operation. And that driving experience was critical to BMW.
“You need two things” for hydrogen to take off, Rath said. “First, you need a cool car, a car that drives good and is appropriate for our customers. And secondly, you also need infrastructure.”
To Rath, those needs are closely related. Build a cool hydrogen car that people really want, he says, and the fueling infrastructure will follow. Rath says BMW has made strides on that front with its latest third-generation fuel cell. It’s more compact, efficient and powerful than previous efforts that made their way into pilot vehicles.
And that brings us to the elephant in the room. I’ve used wishy-washy phrases like “should” and “in theory” here because there’s one glaring roadblock keeping hydrogen cars from getting more popular: a lack of fueling stations. In California, for example, owners of the Toyota Mirai have been burned hard by severely limited infrastructure and expensive fuel, InsideEVs reported previously.
“For sure, all the fast refueling is nothing without an appropriate infrastructure,” Rath said. “It’s all about the infrastructure at the end.”
A BMW Hydrogen Fuel Cell prototype under development in 2018.
BMW will look hard at where hydrogen stations are popping up—currently places like California, Japan and South Korea—and then decide where to sell the iX5 Hydrogen, he said. It’s also working on an initiative to pool hydrogen demand among fleets and industrial facilities, thus signaling to infrastructure providers where they should build. Ultimately, he said, hydrogen needs to be a policy priority for the infrastructure to get where it needs to be.
Despite the challenges, BMW is in hydrogen for the long haul. One more reason is that the supply chain for hydrogen fuel cells is completely different from that of batteries. That helps BMW build a resilient business, Rath said. The pandemic-era semiconductor crisis and, more recently, a severe shortage of Chinese rare earth magnets, highlight how important that kind of supply chain diversification can be.
All that is to say, iX5 Hydrogen isn’t just some super-limited proof-of-concept. It’s the start of a larger hydrogen push. The fuel-cell system inside it will also underpin other BMW models, Rath said, but the company hasn’t decided which ones.
“We wouldn’t just plan for a one-off. That’s clear,” he said.
Contact the author: tim.levin@insideevs.com
